_Honolulu_, 8_th_ _March_ 1889.
MY DEAR CHARLES,—At last I have the accounts: the Doer has done
excellently, and in the words of —, ‘I reciprocate every step of your
behaviour.’ . . I send a letter for Bob in your care, as I don’t know
his Liverpool address, by which (for he is to show you part of it) you
will see we have got out of this adventure—or hope to have—with wonderful
fortune. I have the retrospective horrors on me when I think of the
liabilities I incurred; but, thank God, I think I’m in port again, and I
have found one climate in which I can enjoy life. Even Honolulu is too
cold for me; but the south isles were a heaven upon earth to a puir,
catarrhal party like Johns’one. We think, as Tahiti is too complete a
banishment, to try Madeira. It’s only a week from England, good
communications, and I suspect in climate and scenery not unlike our dear
islands; in people, alas! there can be no comparison. But friends could
go, and I could come in summer, so I should not be quite cut off.
Lloyd and I have finished a story, _The Wrong Box_. If it is not funny,
I am sure I do not know what is. I have split over writing it. Since I
have been here, I have been toiling like a galley slave: three numbers of
_The Master_ to rewrite, five chapters of the _Wrong Box_ to write and
rewrite, and about five hundred lines of a narrative poem to write,
rewrite, and re-rewrite. Now I have _The Master_ waiting me for its
continuation, two numbers more; when that’s done, I shall breathe. This
spasm of activity has been chequered with champagne parties: Happy and
Glorious, Hawaii Ponoi paua: kou moi—(Native Hawaiians, dote upon your
monarch!) Hawaiian God save the King. (In addition to my other labours,
I am learning the language with a native moonshee.) Kalakaua is a
terrible companion; a bottle of fizz is like a glass of sherry to him, he
thinks nothing of five or six in an afternoon as a whet for dinner. You
should see a photograph of our party after an afternoon with H. H. M.:
my! what a crew!—Yours ever affectionately,